School amongst the Trees

School amongst the Trees is situated within the parklands of a former hospital, a site surrounded by trees and spacious greenery, on the edge of the Wagenborgen, a village to the north east of The Netherlands. The building is designed to connect users to their natural surroundings, with a central courtyard bringing the outside into the heart of the school. The classrooms are distributed around this room without a roof, surrounded by a series of flexible in-between spaces allowing students to work alone or in small groups outside of the classroom. The seemingly capricious floor plan creates a large number of niche spaces along its façade too, providing pockets for class-related dwelling, blurring the line between inside and outside learning. With the region being prone to earthquakes, the school has been designed with a cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure, which not only allows for a rapid construction process, adaptability and a warm interior, but also has a high level of earthquake resistance.